How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition (The William James Lectures) 2nd Edition

by J. L. Austin (Author), J. O. Urmson (Editor), Marina Sbisà (Editor)

49 ratings

ISBN-13: 978-0674411524

ISBN-10: 9780674411524

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John L. Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin’s conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.

For this second edition, the editors have returned to Austin’s original lecture notes, amending the printed text where it seemed necessary. Students will find the new text clearer, and, at the same time, more faithful to the actual lectures. An appendix contains literal transcriptions of a number of marginal notes made by Austin but not included in the text. Comparison of the text with these annotations provides new dimensions to the study of Austin’s work.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Immensely worth reading…What is made available here is a choice work by one of the most acute and original minds that England has produced in our time…The myth that Oxford philosophers in general, and Austin in particular, do nothing but examine the details of ordinary linguistic usage should be exploded once and for all by this new book.”―Times Literary Supplement

“Austin had an extraordinarily keen ear for the subtleties of English and a remarkable sensitivity to the aptness of one expression as opposed to another in a given linguistic situation. To read him is not only a pleasure; it is also to learn much about English and to gain a new respect for its proper use.”―The Massachusetts Review

About the Author

J. L. Austin was a British philosopher of language.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0674411528
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Harvard University Press; 2nd edition (September 1, 1975)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 192 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780674411524
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0674411524
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 6.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 4.96 x 0.45 x 7.34 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #186,975 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #73 in Logic (Books)
- #186 in Linguistics (Books)
- #195 in Philosophy of Logic & Language

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49 ratings

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N2009

Philosophical text - Not for fiction writers

Reviewed in the United States on July 27, 2020

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This book compiles lectures on language given by Professor John Austin at Harvard University in 1955. I am not a philosopher so I cannot judge the book on its merits. While I may have been the only person buying this thinking it had something to do with the craft of writing fiction, I wanted to leave this comment just in case they are others thinking it has something to do with how to do things with words from an author's perspective.

If you understand this sentence, then this book may be for you - "Austin's work ultimately suggests that all speech and all utterance is the doing of something with words and signs, challenging a metaphysics of language that would posit denotative, propositional assertion as the essence of language and meaning." (Wikipedia)

4 people found this helpful

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K.V.

re: book quality, not text quality

Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2021

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I figured it would be smart to get the second edition of this Harvard UP book, because who knows- maybe a nice new edition preface or some corrections. This text is a classic of my academic field, so I was glad to finally get a copy for my professional library. But here's the thing: the quality of the printing and cover are BAD. Cheap. I know other academic presses have started to send books that look this bad (Cornell! This is a call out), but I have other Harvard UP books that are perfectly nice. So I started to worry that I'd somehow gotten a pirated copy--it's that cheap and poorly cut text block, blurry printed cover on extra shiny tpb etc. But it looks like, no, this is just a bad quality, legitimate printing. The text is important, the edition is disappointing.

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Jacob

Good, technical info but out of control narrative

Reviewed in the United States on January 6, 2015

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In this review I will summarize Austin's argument and end with some reflections and criticisms:

Summary

This is a primer in speech-act theory. Austin highlights the possibility of a category of speech in which statements are neither true, nor false, but performative. Some statements do things; more specifically, when spoken they create a new situation.

In order to qualify as a performative, a statement must meet certain conditions (pp. 12ff; a statement must be made in good faith by someone who has the authority to make it, etc.) and must be made within a horizon of convention: for example, we understand that a minister or a justice of the peace has the authority to create a married-status and not just any old person off of the street.

One of Austin's strengths in this book is he is able to return to the main argument and sum up lines of thought (the weakness is his continuous getting off of topic. Here are three basic definitions which are crucial to his project.

Locutionary Act: Uttering a certain sentence with a certain sense and reference; equivalent to meaning (109).
Perlocutionary Act: consequences of the act performed
Illocution: the act performed; has a conventional force (109).

Reflection

So far, so good. Speech-act theory is rather simple in the broad contours, but as Austin demonstrates, it suffers the risk of a thousand qualifications. He then gets technical on how a promise/performative may be void, illicit, etc., and this runs for about 6 chapters. By the end the reader wonders, “Why bother?”

Speech-Act theory is a useful way of describing events in our world. As such, I hold to it. If one tries to make it an architectonic theory, then it spins out of control, as Austin himself demonstrated (probably against his intentions). The main drawback with this book, as others have pointed out, is that Austin can't stay on topic for more than two paragraphs.

22 people found this helpful

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Chauncey Bell

The Secret Language of Service

Reviewed in the United States on August 19, 2012

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We live in language, listening and speaking with each other. Every human invention happens in language. Our concerns, our institutions, our dreams, our families and communities, and our projects are constructed first in language. This book is about how that happens (not just in English, but in every language).

Here is the fundamental structure of the language of business, innovation, design, politics, social relations, the construction of trust in our communities, and much more.

Our children study language throughout their school years, and no one ever teaches them that if they want to cause something to happen, they must make a request or an offer. If, in our notes and letters, meetings and speeches, arguments and efforts to convince and market, we don't do the action of uttering or communicating a request or an offer, then whatever actions that occur afterwards are all but accidental. "Requests" and "Offers" are two classes of Professor Austin's performative verbs. We teach our children how to be politically correct in their speaking, but not how to make things happen. How can that be?

I think that should be enough to build more interest in this wonderful little book. I recommend it highly.

However, there are two more things that I want to say about the book.

First, I urge the potential reader not to be deceived. This jewel is walking around in a disguise. The book is assembled from talks that Austin gave in 1955 at Harvard University. The language of "the analytic philosophy of language" has served as a successful strategy for hiding the profound relevance of Austin's work for our everyday lives.

From the picture of him available on the Internet, John Langshaw Austin was the perfect 20th Century Oxford Don -- a super-geek. What is not visible there is that he was an enormously pragmatic and wise man. For a key example, during World War II, Austin led the Allied intelligence efforts leading up to D Day.

Second, and much more important for our world today, in this little book, Austin opens for us the language of the era that we have now entered -- the era of services. For the last few decades the economy of the United States has been predominantly an economy of services. Over 90% of the exchanges that make up our economy come from services. (Remember that inside manufacturing, agribusiness, and extraction industries are vast service networks.) Our business leaders have not yet discovered that the language that we currently use for understanding what we do in business is archaic and obsolete. We speak of inputs, processes, and outputs, flows of things and data, resources, assets, and information.

Services are not constructed in the same way that clocks and automobiles are constructed. They are not things. They are social constructions, built in networks of requests and promises, and in trusting relationships between people speaking and listening to each other, today increasingly through electronic media.

This is a book about the language of service.

I recommend it.

27 people found this helpful

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Geoffrey Johnson

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 4, 2016

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as good as ever was - real classic

Javier

Thought-provoking work

Reviewed in Spain on June 16, 2020

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For me this is a book that challenges our conception of the effects that words, sentences and speech may have beyond the paper. Some parts are hard to understand at first since I guess that the author addresses people with some background in thesw topics, but it’s only about reading twice some sentences and thinking about them instead of moving forward before really understanding.

Tophat

interesting

Reviewed in Canada on October 18, 2019

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very interesting ideas

Lili Yang

Das Buch ist gut

Reviewed in Germany on April 24, 2019

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Das Buch ist ganz neu und gut qualitativ

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LA MAISON DU DICTIONNAIRE / DICOLAND

Etat impeccable!

Reviewed in France on October 10, 2019

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Livre reçu dans un état impeccable, merci!

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How to Do Things with Words: Second Edition (The William James Lectures) 2nd Edition

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